Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Solar power on mine tailings

For the past couple of years there's been a lot of chatter about the idea of covering mine tailings with solar panels.

Well, at the SME meeting that just ended in Phoenix, I spoke with Nathan Barba and Stacey Abend, who run Solarmax Arizona.  The have an experimental installation of their solar photo voltaic geomembrane strips on slopes at Biosphere II and propose  placing them on tailings piles as part of reclamation activities.  The panels are impermeable, preventing erosion, while producing electricity.

4 comments:

  1. Seems like a great "brownfields" application to me.

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  2. Good post! I think that time for adopting green energy sources has arrived.

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  3. Earth is never the same as in the past. We have to create brilliant innovative ideas to provide solutions to our problem with our environment.

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  4. Sounds like a great idea, I hope it turns out to be practical. Many slopes don't seem stable enough...

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